By SEAN AXMAKER, SPECIAL TO THE POST-INTELLIGENCER

Published 10:00 pm, Thursday, December 22, 2005

"Wolf Creek is based on true events set in the desolate Australian outback," or so promises the opening credit. By the end, it is obvious that this grisly and gruesome horror has as much connection to the notorious murders that inspired it as "The Texas Chainsaw Massacre" has to the story of the real life Ed Gein. What it lacks is the startling shock of that inspiration.

It starts out in lazy road movie mode in the company of three pleasant twentysomething vacationers blitzing across the outback. There are some unsettling detours into the company of crude and creepy locals and ominous chords of impending trouble, but it hardly prepares the audience for when the world as we know it drops from under our easy-going trio.

John Jarratt is perfectly creepy as the outback loner gone psychotic survivalist who gets his kicks from the systematic degradation and torture of hapless victims. And make no mistake, the ordeal is excruciating -- for the audience and for the victims -- as they are trussed, tortured and plunged into an exercise in sadism.

Greg McLean directs their torments and escape attempts with a bone-crunching, bullet-splattering, flesh-flaying naturalism that is almost admirable in its simple effectiveness. Almost. His mastery is impressive, but to what end? There's nothing entertaining about it.

"Wolf Creek" aspires to become the Aussie answer to the gritty style of '70s American horror cinema that has suddenly come back in vogue. This may be the most genuine expression of that once shocking trend, but after 30 years the shock is gone. What's left is a grueling exercise in unrelenting brutality with a subtext no deeper than an instinctual fear of the back-country bogeyman.